That doesn't really helps. With only little programmer knowledge you can still find and gather such email addresses and substitute the AT against the @ and DOT against "." without much problems.
I can't believe that this discussion is still going on. :nut:
Even if the developers would stop any working on it I wouldn't feel betrayed, because LFS is one of the best multiplayer racing games I ever seen. (Well as long as a master server is still managing the games and isn't turned off as EA has done it with NFS Porsche and will probably do soon with NFS UG1.) I also saw many racing games with an pathetic multiplayer mode or no working multiplayer support at all without a third party fan patch or mods.
So I would say I got already enough for the money I paid compared to other games. And it's getting even better as far as the developers find some time to implement and test some new things instead of reading and answering to that pointless discussion.
I like arcade fun racer, like NFS HP2, UG1 or Midnight Club 2. I'm also playing with a gamepad and I'm not going to use a wheel. But in LFS almost all cars are still play- and enjoyable for me compared to GPL or Nascar 2003. However I can't compete with the elite drivers in both worlds.
I agree to Hallen. Unfortunatly I haven't played S1. But if the XRG has even on the very long straight of BLackwood no siginificant advantage resulting out of his better acceleration and top speed, he has almost nothing on passages and tracks with only medium and small straigths.
Well, I'm not graduated in physics but in the manual of an other racing game a played once it was told that FWD cars are easier to control and you can easily keep a higher speed in curves, but the RWD cars have a significant better acceleration out of the curves. Even after buying several horse power increasing items, I was still too slow in my FWD out of the curves in order to take over the RWD on the straight.
If you accelerate, your weight moves partly to the back. So you have more weight and more traction on the rear tyres. That's the reason why RWD cars should accelerate faster out of a curves as a FWD car, even if its horse power to weight ratio is somewhat weaker.
I play very often with XRT against FXO drivers. I'm not a very good driver, but right after the start the XRT is really better than the FXO. But I'm too slow or the FXOs drivers are too fast in corners, so I can't make advantage of the XRT better acceleration. Well, I'm not he greatest driver anyway, so this should be tested by a driver who can handle the XRT and the FXO better than me.
An AI driver stopped after finishing the race only a few meters behind the start/goal line. I finished about 20 seconds later and crashed with more than 180 kph with my XRT into the AI's MRT. Now it made a take-off like a plane, flying about 50 meters high and around 200 meters far away. )
(Happened on Blackwood reverse on an wonderful sunny evening.)
It's hard to judge how the handling of a Formular car should feel alright because I'm sure not many of us had the chance to make experience with such cars in real life.
But if you need more grip in slow corners you should try more downforce. There is also a wind chanel test in the set up menue, where you can see how much downforce your car produce depending on the speed.
Basically I drive my own race and hope to come good through the first corner. Then I don't care much about the people who are 6 or more seconds faster or slower than me each round.
LfS has a luxury problem. Sure, it isn't compareable to the numbers of players of Half-Life, but I know some car racing games, where I would be happy if there were 5-10 drivers online at the same time and only one server running.
Nevertheless I would appreciate it, if there were 2-3 "arcarde style" servers with track rotation (but no car rotation) and short turn races (5-7 laps) running. Allowed should be all cars up to TBO class and maybe the LX4.
I think that would be real fun and would appeal to many newbies, in particular if they used to play arcarde racer the last past years.
I agree with AndroidXP. At least an automatically log in in the chat would be fine. Then we'll see, whether the chat is more accepted and used or not. If people should do so, we can think about inroducing further features or additional rooms again, if wanted.
I don't know Unreal, but I like the way of combining chat rooms and a game's server list like it has been done in the gamespy client. There you enter at first automatically the chat of a certain game, then you can look for free players in the chat room and talk to them. You can also join a running server.
Due to the huge amount of online players (compared to other racing games) and the high diversification in driver skills and available cars it should work in LfS with more than one chat room, too. That could also help to gather people with simillar interests and skills in certain rooms.
If nowadays with only one chat a pro driver wants to drive a clean race without noobs in the FO8, he has proberply no interest in talking to someone who is new to the game and who wants to try out another track with the XFG. I think many people try to avoid such fruitless discussions and therfore they don't use the chat as it works today.
I wounder how to bring the chat function to life. I'm playing for about 2 weeks LfS and the chat is almost anytime deserted. But it could be such a good place in order to gather people there and to decide what cars and tracks they want to drive.
Everytime I'm waiting in the chat and I see someone entering it too, he left the chat imidently as if he has entered a forbidden area where a dangerous creature is lurking for him. Sooner as I can type "hi".
Perhaps the chat can be combinded with the car selection group, which could also open the corrosponding chat room automatically, e.g. TBO -> TBO Lounge, STO ->STO Room, S-S -> S-S Only Room etc. Also a class independent chat room for Newbes, Average and Pro Driver would be nice.
I don't think it's necessary to change it. If I want a challenge, then I drive with the XRT just for fun. If I want to have better chance to win a race I choose the FXO. But I'm quite slow anyway, so I'm always driving just for fun, regardless what car I take.
The unbalance of cars can also care for close races between racers of different driving abilities, e.g. the good driver with racing wheel takes the XRT the lesser good driver with keyboard takes the FXO.
Can't you call your server during setting up "Cue-Ball's Track Rotation" or something like that?
I think the track rotation is a good feature. Perhaps 3 races with 10 laps with 1 pit stop would be a good idea too + about 20-30 minutes qualifying by entering a new track. So if somone stumbels into a race, even if it's at lap 4-6 he is already well prepared for the next race if he roughly knows a track.
But there should be no car rotation. Only TBOs as group and no switching to complete different cars like FOX, MRT or GTs. If you're comming to a unknown track and you have also to change the car to one you can't handle, that's too much.
I take back everything what I said before and claim the opposite.
I've just found out that you can change the amount or better the percantage of fuel which should be refilled before a pit stop by pressing "F12", if you're forced to change your strategy.
Do you think I don't know fundamental arithmetic operations?
Put the case you want to stop 1 lap earlier, e.g. because you have been involved in an accident, and you refill from 8% (5% remains due to you're example + 3% saved, due to driving 1 lap less) to 15%, you only refilled 7% not 15%. But 15% is far to less anyway, because you need 18% fuel (6 rounds *3 %) .
I think it's much better if you know you have to refill a certain among of liters and it doesn't matter if I make a pit stop in round 4, 5 or 6 in a 10 lap race.
By the way. I would like to fill the cars with a certain among of fuel in liters or gallons and not in percentages.
For example: I have a car which can be filled with 100 liters. I need them all to finish a race and want to start with 60 liters and 40 liters shall be refilled during pitstop. With real liters I can make a stop after 1/3, the half or nearly up to 2/3 of the racing distance and the missing 40 liters will be refielled during pitstop.
But if i'm refilling percantages I have to consumpt everything. If I refill from 10% to 40% I would only refill 30 liters instead 40. So I haven't enough fuel to finish the race. So I'm very constraint to make the pit stop at a certain time, which makes varying the pit stop strategie during the race nearly impossible.
You can watch the temperature status of you tyres by pressing F9. That may help to see how you're driving style or certain actions harms your tyres or not.